Hi Meddy:

I've done it before, but it took me 12 months.

I did it one month at a time (one month each year) for the past 12 years.

I think that if you try to do a 70 day, 15,000 mile trip, you will only wind up with a sore arse and memories of all the different gas stations you visited along the way... and you will probably never want to ride another motorcycle in your life.

I've done some 'long haul' trips, such as Toronto to Los Angeles and back in 10 days time (that's about a 5,000 mile circuit), and although that kind of 'transiting' - I wouldn't think of calling it 'touring' - has its own charms, you don't really see or experience from the surroundings you pass through. It reminds me of riding from Luxembourg to Poland in 5 hours... I did that once, but all I saw was the yellow line along the left side of the motorway.

My suggestion to you, based on my 12 years of touring one month every summer in Europe, is that you pick one country, or perhaps one region, and plan to explore it. Allow for a day of perhaps 200 miles riding, then a few days staying in one hotel and exploring around the area, then another day of perhaps 200 miles riding, etc.

If you are always on the road doing long distances, you'll soon get mighty tired of checking into a new hotel every night and then checking out again in the morning.

For what it's worth...

Michael

PS: I suggest you budget about 125 Euros per day for food, lodging, and fuel. 30 UK pounds per day is totally inadequate, even if you plan on sleeping under bridges. You'll spend that much just on (cheap, basic) food and fuel.

Hiya all.

I'm closing in on my goal of riding around Europe on my Yamaha Tracer 900. The planned route detailed by Antyx above will be my planned route.

I'm currently planning the first 'leg' of my trip, riding up from Calais to Copenhagen to Helsinki in order to get the ferry over to Latvia. This would be in mid to late May.

I've already ridden extensively through Norway in 2017, so there would be no need to create the expense of doing that again.

My plan would be to ride to Oslo then up through Sweden. I'm wondering the best and cheapest route then to Helsinki?

Cheers.

Four years planning, and it appears you've learned that posting anything specific will tend to get it shot down! So...I hope your schedule (70 days) and budget (30 GBP, doubled to include frivolity) have evolved during the interim.

What's missing here is your stated intent to visit "every single country" in Europe. I understand there are ~44 of these, and it appears you're missing quite a few (Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Malta, Iceland, San Marino, the Vatican, Cyprus), and probably several more (Moldova, Luxembourg, Kosovo, Czech Republic, Germany, even Italy). And don't forget to include Armenia and Georgia, which are geographically and perhaps politically as much European as, say, Turkey. Of course, some minor detours would include a few of these, but certainly not all--and not within your timeframe or budget.

On the other hand--because there's always another hand--getting out on a major trip of any sort is a major accomplishment in itself these days. Hope it works out for you!

Mark

Like Pan European, my wife and I have been on motorcycle holidays in Europe for 1 month a year for 27 years. Over the years we have worked out a system to keep expenditure down when needed - perhaps it may give you some ideas.

We camp on campsites, in a tent, with the occasional cabin or room if we’re in bad weather. Wild camping would be free of course. We look for farm or council owned campsites, out of tourist hot spots, which are the cheapest.
France is the cheapest country in Western Europe, campsites in the Balkans and Eastern Europe are harder to come by and often more expensive than a cheap room - although we did find a council one for 75p a night in Slovakia but that was in 2001.

We carry a large bag of porridge and coffee for breakfast. We purchase baguettes and fillings (cheese, tomato etc) then look for a picnic spot for lunch - often carrying the leftovers (cheese etc) with us for the next day. We will stop around 3pm for a little coffee (no milk).
Once our camp is set up in the afternoon/evening we will pop to the supermarket and buy some dinner to cook, a bottle of wine and some fruit to go with the porridge in the morning. Often we will pop into a bar on the way back for 1 .

We will travel like this for a few days (no motorway) then settle somewhere for 2 or 3 nights, then continue on again.

We avoid cities, they drain our wallets very quickly - too much temptation, for us, to buy stuff, go to a restaurant, go on the . If we want to go to see a city we will book a city break as a separate trip and budget accordingly.

When using this method, I reckon, we average 20€ a night for camping and 20€ a day for food and drink.
Fuel obviously depends on how far and how fast we travel. We tend to stick to A/B type roads and travel around 250 miles a day which, at the moment would cost us around €30 each. Obviously when we stop for a few days this goes right down as we just go to see local stuff, often using 1 bike, (walking in the mountains, local swimming lake etc).

So when we’re on the move it costs us around €100 a day - this is for 2 but I don’t think the camping or food/drink would be a lot different for 1, but the fuel would. So perhaps €60 for 1 using this method.

Hope this info helps - have a great trip.

French accommodation and dinner.
Low budget version

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I'm not quite sure what you mean by cheapest route? The cheapest would be to ride the highway at low speed (to save fuel) and just tent in calm spots. Finland, Sweden and Norway has something called the "every man rights" basically it means you are allowed to camp everywhere (with obv limitations) no matter who owns the land.

You can also use campsites, but that tends to be expensive, everything is expensive in the North.

As for taking the ferry to lativa, I don't think the ferry is operational since covid. You would have to take the ferry from Helsinki to Tallin (Estonia) instead. Should be cheap in the range of 10-30 euros.

I recently rode down from Helsinki to Cyprus, so if you have any questions, feel free to ask. I will try to do a short writeup about it, but the weather is too nice so I gotta go out and ride!

I am currently looking to do an extended EU tour (Ish) this year as well.
I don't want to turn this into a political thread but one thing to be aware off, if you are traveling from the UK on a British passport is that you can now only stay in the Schengen Area for 90 days out of every 180.

If you are only traveling for 70 days then this wouldn't affect you but as others have said more time would allow you to see more and with the nature of any long trip delays are inevitable, there are exceptions to this rule for a select group of countries.

It is worth being aware of this, there are some very hefty potential penalties for over staying it.

These links might be helpful, i'm no way an expert on this, I'm currently getting my head around it at the moment.

https://www.schengenvisainfo.com/per...tish-citizens/
https://cibtvisas.co.uk/The-Schengen...Rule-Made-Easy
Best of luck with the Planning and Enjoy your trip!

Best and cheapest are separate questions.

Cheapest? Tallink/Silja ferry from Stockholm to Helsinki, because you can put your bike on the ferry for free if you buy a passenger ticket and use the Louis.eu partner code (look for Tallink/Silja on https://www.louis.eu/service/rund-um...iscard/partner for details).

Best/most interesting? Eckero Line from Sweden to the western end of Aland, then ride and ferry-hop through the archipelago to Turku or Tampere before riding to Helsinki.

This is a good route (Best ?? Depends on taste)

Stay away from the coast. Boring highway.

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